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Why don't Christians keep kosher? During Jesus' earthy ministry,
He only rarely encountered Gentiles; He said, "But he answered and
said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
(Matthew 15:24). Although He had taught His disciples, "And he saith
unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive,
that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot
defile him; Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the
belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?" (Mark
7:18-19), they had not yet made the connection that that had
anything to do with keeping kosher. Some people deny that Jesus can have
said this, the proof being that the disciples had not drawn this
conclusion:
"But it is very unlikely that Jesus said this. We know
that whether or not Christians were to observe kosher food
regulations was a major controversy for at least a few decades after
Jesus's life. If Jesus had made a statement like this, it is
difficult to imagine that the controversy would have lasted so long
or, at least, why this saying of Jesus was not cited in the context
of the controversy." (Marcus J. Borg, 'Jesus,' p. 73).
But Jesus did say that; He was however 'heard' within a lengthy
interpretative tradition of passages like Isaiah 1:14: "Your new
moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble
unto me; I am weary to bear them," or Micah 6:7-8: "Will the
LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of
rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man,
what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" On
their face these prophetic sayings de-emphasize if they do not
discourage observance of the purity code and the temple cult, but no
one understood them that way. Judaism has always emphasized
orthopraxy, right practice, which takes the place in that religion
of Christian 'orthodoxy,' i.e., right doctrine. Though the prophets
had long been in the habit of suggesting that God is not all that
interested in the purity code, they were not 'heard' when they said
these things, and neither was Jesus, not until Peter visited
Cornelius the Gentile. Upon Jesus' resurrection from the
dead, He commanded His disciples, "Go ye therefore, and teach all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world. Amen." (Matthew 28:19). The command to
teach "all nations" includes Gentiles; in fact the word 'Gentile'
comes from the Latin Vulgate, from 'gens,' meaning 'nation' or 'people.'
This issue came to the fore when Peter was invited to the home of
Cornelius, a God-fearing Gentile. He was reluctant to go, but God
sent Him a vision:
"On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto
the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour:
And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready,
he fell into a trance, And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending
unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let
down to the earth: Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the
earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And
there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said,
Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.
And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed,
that call not thou common." (Acts 10:9-15).
It is God the Holy Spirit who cleansed the unclean foods, not the
will of man! But this viewpoint was not universally accepted within
the church; rather, some insisted the Gentile converts to
Christianity must not only keep kosher, but the males must be
circumcised in accordance with the law of Moses: "And certain men
which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye
be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved." (Acts 15:1).
So what did the church do? They leaped into action and did what
churches do: they called a meeting! This precedent is, in fact, why
Baptists call meetings and vote on matters in dispute.
The church is an 'assembly,' an 'ekklesia.' Although the
Roman empire was an autocracy at the top, at the local level, the
people still retained the power of self-government; an 'ekklesia' is any
democratically self-governing body. For churches which have graduated from the
stage of a missionary plantation, where local leadership has had
time to emerge, this is the normal form of church government. Asking a
Spirit-filled congregation to vote is like polling the Holy Spirit. In the
case before us, the church, after examining all the evidence and
hearing from both sides, decided that Gentile converts to
Christianity do not need to keep kosher:
"The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren
which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia: Forasmuch as
we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with
words, subverting your souls, saying, Ye must be circumcised, and keep
the law: to whom we gave no such commandment: It seemed good unto us, being
assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you with our beloved
Barnabas and Paul, Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also
tell you the same things by mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost,
and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;
That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things
strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall
do well. Fare ye well." (Acts 15:23-29).
Thus ends the story, which is neither irrational, arbitrary nor
unknown. In truth the status of the Mosaic law in Christian thought
is complex. Some large Christian bodies, such as the Seventh Day
Adventists, take a contrarian view to the rest of the household of
faith. Moses' law, not a universal law laid down for all people at
all times and in all places, was part of a covenant between God and
the people of Israel. On the one hand this law was nailed to the
cross: "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against
us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it
to his cross..." (Colossians 2:14). On the other hand the law is holy: "Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy,
and just, and good." (Romans 7:12). The moral law remains an
invaluable guide to the mind of God, while the ceremonial law has
achieved the goal toward which it was designed to point, namely the
sacrifice of the lamb on the cross. Jesus said that not a jot nor tittle
would pass from the law until all was fulfilled:
"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one
tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
(Matthew 5:18).
What was fulfilled on the cross was the end, not by abrogation, but by completion and achievement of its goal,
of the ceremonial aspect of the law: the temple sacrifices and priesthood.
A Jealous God
The God we serve is a jealous God:
"For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:.
. ." (Exodus 34:14).
This is a perceived as a difficulty by the new Atheists; it was a
stumbling block also to television personality Oprah. For that matter
it was a stumbling block to the old Atheists, who saw in this divine
character trait evidence
of bad character:
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